It’s been quiet around here for a while, so I’ll make it official; I’ve decided that the World of Warcraft chapter in my life has ended.

I’m hanging it up now for a few reasons. First, I feel that the game has moved in the wrong direction. The unified vision for WoW started to fade after the Throne of Thunder patch and has been replaced by a design-by-committee approach. Raids have continued to be excellent, but oddly disconnected from the storyline, which itself has been purely wish-fulfillment fantasies with cardboard characters. The kill-the-experience-with-convenience train is up and running full steam, despite some limited efforts to rein it in during Mists. Player skill matters less than it ever did for solo content, and group content has in many cases become less strategic and more twitch-focused. (This is likely a second-order effect of a design that allows so much gameplay to be “improved” via UI addons, but that genie’s out of the bottle.)

Second, the analysis that I used to provide is both less relevant and being done better by others. Yes, I’m an Excel nerd, but I loved calculating when/how ArPen was better then Agility, or how to best maintain the Mangle debuff, or what talents provided the best tradeoffs for DPS loss vs. utility gain back when bearcat was a thing. Now, things have pretty much been reduced to “get the best ilvl gear you can,” and sites/programs like Ask Mr. Robot, Icy Veins, or SimulationCraft can help you more with whatever optimization is left then I could ever hope to provide. (Not to knock those sites; I’ve been honored to work with Kihra, Zoopercat, Damien+Vlad, and many others.)

The most important reason is mostly mundane, though; family and work responsibilities have sucked up most of the free time I used to have. One of the biggest things that kept me active in WoW even when the game wasn’t very fun was the ecosystem: my amazing raid group, the great writers at WoW Insider (boo)/Blizzard Watch (yay!), the forum community here on TFD, Twitter friends, and more. Unfortunately, real life hasn’t been tolerant lately; I work in computer security for the military, which has been a pretty happening place of late, and last month my grandfather passed away. After returning from the funeral, I simply decided it was time to move on to other things then try to carve time out again to play on a high level.

I bought a year of time via tokens when they were launched, so I’ll pop into the game occasionally as a tourist, and I’ll happily do whatever’s necessary to support continuing discussion on the forums. I may also write something regarding Hearthstone from time to time. Mostly, though, this druid’s going to quietly fade into the Dream and let everyone else’s Azerothian adventures continue. May your connections be stable, your drops bountiful, and your /roll’s large. :)

Nothing. Feral single-target damage is still top-tier or close to it, our 2/3-target cleave is decent, and anything involving short-lived adds or mass AoE is terrible.

Q: Trinkets!

A: That’s not a question. Anyway, the top trinkets from this tier are interesting because they have downsides. I’m listing them assuming you get 100% effectiveness out of them; realize that may not be the case.

Soul Capacitor is overbudget, because it has a huge downside – it’s possible for you to have to move/etc during the proc and get 0 benefit from it. I think it’s worth the risk, generally. BiS (with a big cautionary footnote)

Seed of Creation has a similar caveat. It provides no stats, instead nearly tripling the length of Tiger’s Fury and Berserk. If you can stick on the boss for 45 seconds, it’s a great trinket, especially if there’s a damage boost active (hint hint)

Mirror of the Blademaster spawns images that bladestorm on top of whatever you use it on. Plus: They’ll hit anything that moves through, making it useful for AoE. Minus: They stay stationary, meaning if the boss moves, your images are doing zip.

The others (Fel-Spring Coil, Malicious Censer, Stone of Fire, Skull of War) are pretty much standard proc-based trinkets that are on-budget with their item level.

In any event, sim your character if you want to know for sure “what is best.”

Q: How are the set bonuses?

A: Very, very strong. Unless you’re going from Mythic BRF gear to Normal HFC gear, you should probably break your old 4p when you get the new 2p. Again, sim your character to know for sure.

Q: What do I do on <Boss X>?

A: Go to the Raid Strategies forum and check the appropriate thread. Except for Hellfire Assault, that fight just sucks, no way around it. At least it’s easy.

Restoration: Again, discussion from MMO-Champion. This thread was particularly useful, even if I disagreed with some of it. I may write my next column on restoration talents just because there’s a bunch of debate.

One aside:

Incidentally, @WarcraftLogs, @AskMrRobot (I think), and RaidBots (amazing in Cata/ MoP) were created by ferals/guardians. We love our datas.

So…interesting things are afoot… While I was in Germany, I got invited to help start this Blizzard Watch thing that you may have heard of. :) It’s pretty amazing, actually – I think we’re close to being the largest Patreon campaign ever. I don’t think there’s an official list anywhere, but the most I saw was about $15k/month for a couple of podcasts, and we’re close to that now. (Actually, Alex and Adam have done it all. I just do REALLY GOOD unsolicited advice. I swear.)

Anyway, druid stuff! You can see the first re-started Shifting Perspectives column on Blizzard Watch here! I didn’t do it for the first one, but going forward, I’ll likely be linking to each column here as it goes up, along with some additional material that may or may not be interesting. For the time being, it’s going to be pretty light on feral because I have to cover all four specs, but that may change in the future.

I will also be doing Hearthstone content for Blizzard Watch. My first column, on deckbuilding for new players, can be seen here. At the moment, I’m not sure how much Hearthstone content the site will have going forward, so if you want to read more of my HS stuff, let the editors know. :)

Quick post to let readers know I’m heading to Germany this weekend for a conference next week! Never been to Germany before (or any part of Europe, really, save connecting flights) so very excited even though my entire family wants me to look out for various German stuffs to bring home. I’d love to hear from any German readers I have, so drop me a message on Twitter or through the site/forums.

It’s been all over the gaming online community the past few days, but in case you missed it, Re/code (among others) is reporting that Joystiq is shutting down. This will include WoW Insider and Massively, as well. (Due to AOL corporate, they haven’t officially confirmed it, but based on several unofficial sources, it’s 99% sure at this point.)

This hits me hard. While I’ve been pretty itinerant in my writing, doing it more as a pastime, several good friends wrote as a full-time job. Living just got significantly harder for them, and I hope that they find other opportunities.

Why the closure, though? As a former WI writer, I’d say the closure is rooted in two main causes.

An overly generous payment model. WI/JS generally paid writers by the standards of a print publication; i.e. flat rate per article written, with a focus on editing to ensure quality material was written. This made for better articles (WI had consistently some of the best WoW writing for years) but the payoff just wasn’t there in terms of views. When your site is 100% supported by advertising, it’s much more efficient to tie payment to views, as *cough* certain other sites do. Sucks for the writers, bad for the readers, but advertisers pay based on numbers, not comments praising the quality of the writing.

AOL Corporate is desperate to cut costs. AOL should have broken itself up long ago. They had a ton of money from winning the early Internet race, and used it to get big without really planning out how they would continue to fund things. Online writing (as mentioned above) is inherently a low-margin activity because the barrier to entry is so low, and adding AOL overhead to it makes it even more difficult.

Unfortunately, it’s tough for me to advocate for WI to continue. Looking specifically at the WoW space, WI engagement has fallen off dramatically. You can get most anything at Wowhead; MMO-Champion/Curse does your breaking news and addons; Icy-Veins does obsessively detailed strategies. What does WI do? It’s great for new players and those who like reading about a variety of different things, but it’s hard to do that better. Some monthly pageview stats I pulled to back this up (note that these are US only from compete.com, but should be fairly representative; numbers include pre-WoD and post-WoD)

Wowhead: 600k-1m

MMO-Champion: 300k-600k

Icy Veins: 200k-500k

WoW Insider: 100-350k

I see rumors that a Patreon-funded version of the various sites is being discussed, and I’m hopeful that we’re at a point on the Internet where we can do that and make it a success.

What about me?

Seeing as I haven’t written anything on the blog since WoD launched, I should probably add something here. Nothing bad has happened: I was too busy playing WoD for a month to write anything (woohoo!), then was doing family things over the holiday, and lately I’ve just been feeling the same lack of motivation and niche that has affected WI.. I don’t mythic raid, so I have very little to say about ferals that would be meaningful in a competitive context. (Stenhaldi write this analysis on the forums, which sums up basically everything I would say, but much better.) With the gear simplifications, Ask Mr. Robot does a much better job of helping people optimize there then my old gear-list analyses would. Additionally, my full-time job is picking up substantially, to the point where I have much less time to engage with a community like I used to.

Long story short: I need to break the feeling that I have to write “the best thing or nothing at all,” and just write stuff because I enjoy it. I’m getting there..maybe? Don’t know. Not sure. :) Hit the forums for more pertinent feral discussion, ping me on Twitter if you want to talk about whatever, and now close your feed reader/browser and go back to work!

There’s a ton of resources out there, so rather then write a mammoth wall-o-text, I’m going to make this as short as possible while linking all over the place so you can get as in-depth as you want.

Feral Druid Things

1. Ger the Glyph of Travel as soon as you can find it on the AH, it makes getting around so much easier. Ditto Glyph of Savagery.

2. As soon as you get the Rake perk, you’ll want to open with that from stealth, instead of Shred. Of course, if you’re in ubergear, you can skip the stealth part altogether and just demolish things, but that goes away as you level.

3. Spec SOTF for leveling, but use Incarnation for dungeons. It’s a surprisingly good talent. Force of Nature is unsurprisingly terrible.

Leveling Quickly

1. Stack some combination of Isle of Thunder/Shado-Pan/Klaxxi/Timeless Isle quests. Log in at Isle, port to Shado-Pan, hearth or fly to Klaxxi, trinket port to Timeless Isle, guild cloak port to SW, Mage tower port to Blasted Lands. If starting at 12AM, may want to only save 20-22, start questing immediately, and hearth out/back once you get garrison port.

2. Consumable up – might as well use them. Food, flask, DPS potions for rares/overpulls, etc. If going all-out, get speed (Darkwater) potions, slowfall potions for shortcuts, gems to gem gear as you get it, etc. Cracked Talisman is also very useful.

3. Buy all 3 guild battle standards. They buff XP gain from monsters and treasures by 15%/10%/5%. 10 minute CD per banner, so you should be able to drop one for most treasures you find.

4. Or, if you want, totally ignore everything in this section and level at your own speed! That’s perfectly cool too!

Waypoints to all WoD treasure chests. Treasures are very prevalent in WoD – there are 20-40 in each zone. They are like Timeless Isle treasures; they’re phased so everyone can pick them up (once). Treasures give slightly less XP then completing a quest.

Professions and Garrisons

1. You’re steered to your Garrison immediately after finishing the introductory Tanaan quests. Once you finish the intro garrison quests, you’ll have a L1 Garrison with an open small plot and a Barracks-filled large plot. After finishing the intro zone (Shadowmoon/Frostfire), you’ll unlock a L2 Garrison, which opens an extra small and medium plot. L3 isn’t available until 100 and adds an additional plot of each size, for a final total of 3 small, two medium, and two large. You’ll also pick up some extra buildings along the way that everyone gets: the mine, the herb garden, the fishing shack, and the pet menagerie.

2. Gathering professions are largely unaffected by Garrisons. Gathering is super easy in Draenor as you can gather from any node (or skin) regardless of skill, you’ll just get less from it.

3. Small building are mainly for crafting. Each crafting profession has an accompanying small building that can build most (not all) of Each profession also has a Unique Resource (I’ll use engineering’s, Gearspring Parts, as an example) that must be generated in order to build most of the new cool things. Stay with me here, this gets a little complicated.

If you have BOTH the crafting building and matching profession, you can get 16 of your Unique Crafting Resource per day; 10 from the profession, 6 from the building.

If you have the profession, but not the building, things are mostly the same. You only get 10 Resources per day, and you have to go to Ashran instead of your garrison to learn new recipes, but that’s it.

If you have just the building, you can do some things with the building, but it’s limited. You’ll only get 6 Resources per day and can spend the Resources for the base-level crafts, but won’t be able to buy the upgrades or unique items.

Other than the crafting buildings, there’s also the Storehouse for extra work orders and garrison bank access (meh) and the Salvage Yard for extra rewards from follower missions.

4. Medium buildings give you stuff. The Barn gives Savage Blood (needed for ALL epic crafts), the Inn gives you daily dungeon quests and more followers, the Lumber Mill lets you harvest Timber which turns into extra Garrison Resources, and the Trading Post lets you trade reagents for Garrison Resources (or vice versa). There’s also a PvP building in there for some reason.

5. Large buildings offer buffs. You start with a Barracks for free, which buffs your followers and lets you make certain followers bodyguards, who fight with you in the wild. There’s also the Bunker, which buffs quest rewards, can upgrade followers, and gives you free bonus rolls; the Stables, which increases mount speed and prevents being dazed; the Mage Tower, which lets you port around Draenor; and the Gearworks, which gives you a different fun toy/special ability to use every day.

6. My picks: I’ve changed my mind around a few times, but I’ve finally settled on these starting choices for my main, who is Alch/Engi.

Small: Salvage Yard, Enchanting, Inscription. I like the follower minigame, so Salvage Yard is a must-take. I’m not building the Alchemy building because the Alch unique resource is only used for making a trinket and super-flasks; my profession should generate more than enough mats for that. I’m swapping in the Enchanter’s building so I can disenchant quest greens. Inscription over Engineering is a tough choice; I will likely start with Inscription just to generate cards for a Darkmoon trinket, then switch it to Engineering later.

Medium: Trading Post, Inn. Not a PvPer, so the PvP building is out (should’ve been a building that everyone gets, really). I went back and forth on Lumber Mill or Trading Post for a long time; both will generate you Garrison Resources, but Trading Post is ultimately more flexible and doesn’t require you to go harvesting. Finally, Inn wins over the Barn because I’ll be running a lot of dungeons at 100, though my alt will have a Barn to sell the Bloods.

Large: Barracks, Bunker. Glyph of Travel means I’m not too concerned with the Stables, I think Engineering will give me enough toys to get around fast that I don’t need the Mage Tower, and the Gearworks looks more like a “fun for alts” thing than anything else.

From browsing around the Internet, there’s a lot of mixed feelings about this Blizzcon. Pretty much, the people who were there in person thought it was awesome (how often do you get to see Blizzard announce a new IP?) but the people watching on Virtual Ticket weren’t so happy, due to there being no WoW news at all.

Let’s recap!

Overwatch

My prediction: No new franchises.

Actual: Swing and a miss. :) In retrospect, it makes sense; that time gap in the schedule had to be for “SOMETHING,” after all. 0/1 points.

Overwatch looks stellar. It’s very similar to Team Fortress 2 in many ways, but with a dash of MOBA flavor. Most shooters go for a limited set of classes or loadouts; Overwatch is going for LOTS of classes (“heroes”) that all fall into 4 archetypes. I can’t think of a shooter that’s tried this since the ill-fated Shadowrun (which was ahead of its time) on PC/360, though I’m definitely not a shooter expert. I will probably play it some, but in general, I agree with Azuriel (which I tend to do). I’ve always preferred IoC/AV over WSG/TP, largely because I know my lack of PvP skill will impact the team less. Similarly, that’s why I’ve been okay playing Battlefield or Planetside 2, but tend to shy away from things like Call of Duty or Halo.

It’ll do well (when does Blizzard make anything that doesn’t?), but I can see the “no restriction on hero selection” balancing being a major issue. I was already hearing stories of people playing at Blizzcon and stacking multiple Reinhardts. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the competitive play mode ban multiples of the same hero.

Warcraft/World of Warcraft

Actual: There was absolutely NO new WoW info at Blizzcon, which I think is a first. They obviously didn’t want to take any focus off of Overwatch, but judging by the coverage, you’d almost think it was one of their older games they were remenbering fondly, not an active game. There was also no news about the remake of the earlier Warcraft games.

There was a Warcraft movie trailer, and the movie panel was very impressive. Unfortunately, you had to physically be at Blizzcon to see the trailer. They did put out a tentative release date of March 2016 for the movie, which is very interesting, timeline-wise. Seems to me that Blizzcon 2015 would be a perfect time to announce the Warcraft remakes and the next WoW expansion, shooting for release around the movie’s release. Anyway, 2.75/3 points, deducting a quarter point for no patch 6.1 news.

Starcraft 2

My prediction: Legacy of the Void announcement, playable, no date.

Actual: Nailed this one, but this was pretty much a given. They had to say something about SC2 this year. 1/1 points.

Diablo 3

My prediction: New D3 expansion announced.

Actual: Nope, just information about Season 2, which has a little bit of new stuff, but is the WoW equivalent of just adding a new quest hub. I’m surprised by this; I though they would have learned from their mistake of not pushing more expansions for Diablo 2, while it still had a large following. 0/1 points.

Hearthstone

Actual: Wow. I was NOT expecting a new expansion pack this early (next month!), or the Goblins vs. Gnomes theme. Blizzard is pivoting here; they brought in an initial fanbase with the WoW hooks, but now they’re going hard after mobile users. Half credit for at least getting the mechanical theme right, .5/1 points.

Heroes of the Storm

Prediction: No major features announced, open beta Winter 2015.

Actual: Well, they said “closed” beta in January instead of open beta, but time will tell how closed that actually is. They did announce a couple of new game modes which are clones of other MOBA game modes. Half credit again, .5/1 points.

New Hearthstone expansion, with cards for new WoW figures and Ulduar. No date, maybe a timeframe.

Heroes of the Storm: no major new features, just announcement of open beta timeframe for Winter 2015.

Overall, I didn’t do too bad (4.75/8 in my arbitrary scoring system) except for not predicting Overwatch. Looking forward to Blizzcon 2015, I think you’ll see the pendulum swing back towards WoW and Diablo, with expansion announcements (WoW’s will probably be Legion-themed), plus more on Overwatch.

So a friend of mine was on the con floor when the power went out, and things went crazy for a while. One of the Blizzard guys ran off to see if he could fix the power, and left his laptop open with his email logged in! My friend, curious sort that he is, checked it out and couldn’t help but take a look when he saw the email titled “Draft HS: GvG patchnotes from meeting on the 3rd.” Some pretty crazy changes, IMO! I’ve transcribed this from the cellphone pics he sent me. -Ala

Guys, latest changes look good so far. Keep it up; remember, design goal for this go-around is to make sure a losing player always has some shot, no matter how narrow, to get back into the game. -BB

Goblins vs. Gnomes

The new Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion set offers 120 new cards to add to your Hearthstone collection! Goblins vs. Gnomes cards can be purchased with gold or real money, or won from the Arena.

Spectator Mode

Spectator Mode has been added!

You can spectate by clicking the spectate button on your friends list when people are in the game. While playing, you can see who is watching you play! You can make your games invite only, if desired. You can spectate two players at the same time for Tournaments.

Hero Power Changes

After an extensive review, we’re concerned that Hero Powers are making play too predictable. We want every turn in Hearthstone to feel like an adventure, not a chore. Therefore, we are introducing some mild randomness into Hero Powers.

New Hero Powers

Druid: Now reads “Choose One: +1 Attack this turn or +1 Armor. Has a 50% chance to proc Omen of Clarity, reducing Shapeshift’s mana cost to 0 next turn.”

Hunter: Now reads “Deal 1 damage to the enemy hero. Has a 50% chance to proc Wild Quiver, allowing Steady Shot to be used again this turn for free.”

Both Soulfire and Doomguard were designed around forcing the Warlock to pay a card cost for an above-cost spell or minion; however, it has become too easy to evade that cost.

General

The Shop interface has been updated to include Goblins vs. Gnomes card packs.

An additional gameboard is available for play.

Additional music tracks have been added.

Goblins vs. Gnomes cards can now be searched for using the term “GG” in the Collection Manager.

Bug Fixes and Miscellaneous Changes

A confirmation dialog has been added to the “Concede” button. Players still having difficulty may enable “AOL-Mode Concedes” in the Options screen, which requires 3 button clicks, 2 authenticator codes, and a phone call.

Additional anti-bot technology has been added to Hearthstone. If bot play is suspected (consistent turn times, illogical plays, choosing Shaman), the client may require you to solve a CAPTCHA before beginning play.

Due to language concerns, a filter has been added to deck names. The client will no longer accept decks named with curse words, infectious diseases, or Kappa.

The inadvertently-added GLaDOS card has been removed from the game. You monster.

It’s been an incredible journey. I started this blog way back in July 2009 while serving in Korea, with my initial posts getting single-digit views (Thanks, Mom). Now, five years and three continents later, I’m a published author. I still can’t believe that people are actually giving me money to write things.

It wasn’t just me, though! Many of the old WoW Insider crew got recruited to turn this thing out, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention them. Go follow them all on Twitter and give kudos. (Except for Bendak, tell him to stop stealing the feral gear.)

Warrior: Rossi. (@MatthewWRossi) Just Rossi. He’s achieved single-name status. Has forgotten more things then I will ever learn. Go buy his book if you want your mind blown.

Editor, Whip-Cracker, and Generally Awesome Lady: The Stickney! (@Shadesogrey) Damn, I forgot to include “slayer of internet dragons” in the title. Senior editor over at WoW Insider.

Of course, I can’t forget Ken and the other people at BradyGames, who run a great outfit. Last, and most critically, huge thanks to Arielle, Hamlet, and Cyous for helping me nail down some things about Druid non-feral specs, even when I couldn’t tell them why I was asking, and Pawkets/Tinderhoof for helping with feral.

The Giveaway!

Ok, enough acknowledgements. I’m generally didn’t consider myself much of a strategy guide person, but this thing is massive. I’m talking 300+ pages of solid info. If you’re like me and forget how to play your alts after a while, this is a great resource for getting you back up to speed quickly. It’s also a great gift for someone who’s just getting started with the game. I would say more, but the thing isn’t actually published yet, so I can’t. :)

Long story short: I have an extra copy of the guide (a $24.99 value), thanks to BradyGames, and I’d like to give it to one of you. Just enter below. Please note that only US residents are eligible (sorry, EU-friends), you must be over 18, and you must have a valid shipping address (no PO Boxes). Full T&C’s are in the giveaway app. Best of luck!

(EDIT: Aus/NZ residents now have a chance to win one as well, thanks to Binkenstein! Go here for more details.)